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The Spanish- American War 



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Copy 1 The Decline and Fall of a Great Nation, 
The Causes Which Led to the War, 
And the Likely Results on Ourselves 
and the World. 



DELIVERED ON THE AFTERNOON OF JuLY OD, 1898, IN 
THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BOSTON, 



By SCOTT Fj HERSHEY, PH.D. 



Published for the Author. 



7 



Ms' 



NTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



On Memorial Sunday, in the afternoon, one of the Grand Army 
Posts attended the First Presbyterian Church for its annual religious 
service. The discourse I delivered on that occasion led to the sug- 
gestion for a treatment of our present trouble with Spain. As I had 
been for years an observer of the conditions which I foresaw would 
some day lead to the fall of the Spanish nation, I entered upon the 
taskwith pleasure. 

On the afternoon of July 3d, though it was the hottest day of a 
continuously-sustained heat which had been experienced in Boston 
for eighteen years, an unexpectedly large number, many of whom 
were Grand Army men, listened to a rapid talk for an hour and ten 
minutes. A gentleman, not known to me, immediately arose, and 
after some highly complimentary remarks, moved a vote of thanks 
and then a vote to request the publication in pamphlet form. 

I confidently hold that in these pages will be found the causes 
of Spain's decay, a justification of our course, and, at least, a fairly 
intelligent outlook into the broader mission which confronts us, and, 
in addition, a timely warning to our own nation to beware. 

SCOTT F. HERSHEY. 

First Presbyterian Church, Bostctt^July 5, i8g8. 



\ 

V> 3 

The closing years of the niaeteenth century are witnessing cer- 
tain movements of important interest to the worldwide cause of 
humanity, and to civil and religious reform. The stupendous signi- 
ficance of this statement may be seen when I say that, when these 
movements are brought to a close, it will be found that the political 
map of the world will be greatly changed, and the nation which 
three hundred years ago was the mightiest power of the world, shall 
never again associate with the leading nations. Some nations move 
forward, under the momentum of high and morally indispensable 
laws of national character, sweeping out of their paths the encum- 
brances and debris thrown into the highway of progress by dying 
civilizations ; while other nations, under the inexorable laws of 
retribution, to which they have subjected themselves by a prolonged 
and deliberate course of crime and inhumanity, enter on the fiaal 
steps of ruin into which they are driven, not by external foes, but 
by internal evils. 

Our country is engaged in a war for the third time in its history, 
with a power on the other side of the Atlantic. We are engaged in 
war with Spain. It requires a pause to believe that this is true. 
We Americans are mostly a peace-loving people. We do not quick- 
ly, or kindly, take to the assembling of fleets, or the mobilization of 
armies. We have studiously avoided the diplomatic and political 
entanglements in Europe. We early served notice that we desired 
to be left alone to pursue the high course of national development 
indicated to us by Providence, and planned by the founders of our 
Republic ; and at the same time we disclaimed any desire to take 
a hand in European problems. And yet, having for over one hun- 
dred years adhered with persistent consistency to this policy, we 
now find ourselves, by our own appointment, engaged ia war with a 
European nation. 

A faithful review of history will show that the United States 
and Spain are in conflict because of the absolute necessity for a con- 
flict, unless one nation or the other had departed from its settled 
policy. The paths of adverse and antagonizing forces have been 
for a hundred years running toward a point of contact, and by < e 



4 
very law of hostile forces, when that junction was formed a war 
had to come. 

In my study the other day, I was examining a map of the 
American continent for the year 1800. The territory of the United 
States was bound on the west by the Mississippi River, beyond 
which, stretching off to the Pacific, lay the possessions of Spain, 
reaching from the British Provinces and the disputed territory of 
Oregon, on the north, clear down to, and encircling the Gulf of 
Mexico, including all of the two Floridas, and portions of the terri- 
tory now belonging to Alabama and Mississippi, and on, through 
the Southern portions of the continent embracing Mexico, twelve 
hundred miles long, with an average of eight hundred in width ; 
Central America, twice the area of our New England States; Peru, 
itself twice as large as that portion of our country which 
lies east of the Ohio and north of the Potomac; Chili, four times 
the siz3 of New England; Colombia, ten times as large as New 
England ; the Argentine Republic, in size considerably more than 
one-third the whole present area of the United States, including 
Alaska; Uruguay, nearly twice the sizi of New England; Paraguay, 
still larger; Ecuador, five times the size of New England; and 
Venezuela, eleven times our New England area; and the Isles of 
Cuba and Porto Rico, in the South Atlantic. These were the 
Spanish possessions in America. The United States, at the begin- 
ning of this century, had no Pacific coast line and no shore washed 
by the Gulf of Mexico. As tlie century opened, the territory occu- 
pied by Spain, on this Western hemisphere, was at least six times as 
great as that held by the United States. As the century closes, Spain 
is in a hopeless struggle to find some way, agreeable to her pride, to 
withdraw her last title from the South Atlantic. 

We are called to witness the last gasps of a dying nation. What 
is the nature of the fatal disease that is taking off this nation ? What 
are its symptoms, and what were its causes .'' My most enj oyable 
intellectual pleasure is the study of history. It abounds with im- 
portant lessons and salutary warnings. The history of Spain for 
four hundred years points out the causes of certain national decay, 
and marks the rocks, hidden in the tempestuous waters of national 
life, where the ship of slate will be sure to go down if she runs upon 
them. 

Gibbons says : " It took Rome five hundred years to die. Spain 



s 

entered upon her career of death four hundred years ago. Bat 
Spain has been practically dead for about a century, only presenting 
before the world a pretence for national integrity, solidity, and pros- 
perity. The nation without great men is without a head. During 
this century Spain has not furnished a single scholar of world wide 
fame and influence, in literature or natural science, or political science 
or religious lifo. The nation that dies at its top soon becomes de- 
crepit throughout its entire body. The decline and fall of the once 
great Spanish nation is full of warning to the greit nations of our 
day." 

The task I assign myself this afternoon is : — 

1. To point out the causes which brought Spain to ruin. 

2, The way in which our country became entangled in war with 
her. 

3 The way in which this war may affect America and the world. 

We shall not have to seek far to find the causes which have 
brought Spain down from first position among the nations to that 
of the very lowest in the scale of Christian civilizition. These 
causes are perfectly patent to every candid student of history; aad 
we are in the midst of events which suggest that our people should 
sit calmly before the open page of history and learn of it. The 
causes which have led Spain through four hundred years of de;ay, 
and now cite the attention of the world to behold their evil iaflaence 
in the life of nations, are these : The ignorance of the masses, the 
bigotry, superstition, and cruelty of her religion; the tyrainy of her 
government, and the corruption of her leaders. 

The certain ruin which these conditions are capable of working 
in a country is made clear, if we contemplate the position once occu- 
pied by Spain. Hers was not only a land of chivalry, and of accom- 
plishment, and of wealth ; but of trade, navigation, discovery, and 
research. The greatest of maritime nations, she was mistress of all 
seas, and first among the courts of Europe. Her Charles V. was 
heir to more than half the thrones of the world. Spain, under this 
king, held sway over mightier kingdoms, and possessed larger 
opportunities, than ancient Rome when she was mistress of the 
world. The Spain of that day had the wealth, she occupied the 
geographic vantage points in Europe, Asia, Africa and Ameri:a, and 
had that one universal opportunity which came to no other nation 
for two centuries, to take up the high duty of placing before all the 
world a powerful example of what a great natioa should be and do. 



6 
and ol leading the world into the high paths of the best possible 
civilization. Her failure has been as monumental as her opportuni- 
ties were remarkable. 

We fiud the first cause of Spain's decay to be that of national 
ignorance. Her standard of intelligence is hardly that of the general 
standard of the sixteenth century in Europe. Intellectually the 
world has swept far beyond her. Fully sixty-nine out of every one 
hundred of the Spanish people are unable to read. From this low 
intellectual ground she is unable to attain to those advanced princi- 
ples of justice, humanity and right, which now rule in the inter- 
national relations of the world, and because of this she is equally 
unable to administer her home affairs. Since the day of Isabella 
the Spanish government has discouraged intelligence, industry, and 
skill; and that nation must expect to find a painful path into 
oblivion, which neglects the schooling of the common people, who 
after all are the ground upon which national prosperity and integrity 
must stand. Because of their condition the common people in 
Spain should be shown the pity of a merciful world ; because of 
their stupendous folly and criminal neglect, the rulers of Spain 
deserve the scorn of civilized communities. The people which in 
this day depend on monks and nuns to educate Iheir children, will 
no longer be classified among the leading nations. Spain is doomed 
because for three centuries she has refused to participate in the 
general education and enlightenment of the world. 

It does not take a very careful study of Spanish history and 
character, to cverwhelDi with the feeling that somehow Spain's reli- 
gion is connected with Spain's decay. Other people retained the 
religious superstition of the Middle Ages, and still others a religious 
bigotry that should have passed away centuries ago ; but the Span- 
iards are the only people who have retained, in their religious views 
and practices, that ugly combination of religious barbarism, viz.^ 
superstition, bigotry and cruelty. Her religion has put shackles on 
liberty and an embargo on inquiry, and has conducted, at home and 
in all her colonies, a blameworthy crusade against free institutions, 
and every type of Christianity not of her peculiar brand. The 
Spanish constitutions have been of the most pronounced stamp of 
religious intolerance known to constitutional students. In the penal 
code of Bolivia, once a Spanish colony and still a Spanish country, 
is this section : " Whoever conspires directly, and in fact, to estab- 



7 
lish any other religion in Bolivia than the Catholic Apostolic Roman 
religion, is a traitor, and shall suffer the death penalty." This spirit 
of religious intolerance is of the demoniac kind, and cultivates the 
entire horde of inhuman and brutal passions. History cannot over- 
look the count, in settling accounts with Spain, that her foremost 
leaders in state aSairs were equally foremost as religious bigots. 
Isabella, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Charles V., Philip II., and Alva, 
were as intolerant in their religion as they were brutal in their pas- 
sions. This hideous nightmare of intolerance has most heavily 
afflicted Spain. Under its bidding she has blindly driven from her 
shores, or put to death, that portion of her race which in her present 
crisis would have furnished the intelligence, wealth and integrity 
sufficient to save her. The year that Columbus discovered the 
American islands, which she is now losing, Isabella issued her mem- 
orable decree of expulsion, sending three-fourths of a million of her 
most thrifty population beyond her borders, and confiscated their 
property, because they would not, like dumb cattle driven, blindly 
follow her religion. Intolerance is the mother of weakness. O 
Spain, thy retribution has come at last I Thy crimes have overtaken 
thee, and thou goest down unf eared, unhonored, and unsung I Ah, 
Spain, thou art the home of the Inquisition, of Dominic and Torque- 
mada; and these have made of thy history a veritable chamber of 
horrors. Let us not fail, as we stand by the death struggle of 
Spain, to contemplate the disaster of her religious folly, or fail to 
fasten the responsibility upon her religious leadership. The Spanish 
people are the most intensely religious, according to their religion, in 
Europe. It has been the most dominant force in Spanish character 
for four centuries. It has originated, directed, and controlled inter- 
nal affairs and foreign policy; and in her colonies the religious 
leaders have administered the civil functions. In the hour of her 
dissolution her religion must be brought into court. Her population 
has declined one million in ten years; her income has fallen away 
from $i,200,ooo,oco thirty years ago, to $600,000,000 this year ; the 
national debt is far greater than that of the United States ; and now 
the remaining sixteen million of her population, ignorant, bigoted 
and pauperized, must support in idleness one half million people 
belonging to the religious orders. Had Spain built more school- 
houses and fewer monasteries and nunneries during the nineteenth 
century, she might have been spared the shame and ruin with which 
she faces the twentieth century. 



Incapability of Spanish leadership in American civilization, is 
shown to lie, in a great part, in the cruelty of her government. As 
all people in the last centuries have grown into an appreciation of 
their just rights, they have not taken kindly to the ways of despot- 
ism. Spain and Austria have tried to carry through the nineteenth 
century the narrow, monarchic spirit which marked the old monarch- 
ies of Europe. The House of Hapsburg has furnished both thrones 
with rulers, without much interruption, for four centuries ; and dur- 
ing these centuries the cruelty, barbarism, and inhumanity of Spain, 
have worked a course of crime most atrocious in character and gi 
gantic in degree. 

No nation, in all the tedious ways of universal history, can bS 
cited to answer for torture on a scale so extensive. Pagan Rome, 
in the days of Nero, slaughtered fewer wild beasts in the arena than 
Spain burned and tore asunder by the Inquisition, under Torquema- 
da. The incomprahensible Turkish government starved no more in 
all Turkey in two years, than Spain in Cuba under Weyler in six 
months. The march of Spanish conquest in Mexico and Peru, un- 
der Pizzaro and Cortez, has gone into history as a highway of mur- 
der and inhumanity, the only excuse for which was Spanish greed. 
Spain covered the land of the Netherlands with blood, under the 
frightful Prince of Alva, who boasted that he had " caused eighteen 
thousand six hundred persons to be executed by the Inquisition." 
In a period of seventy years Spanish cruelty reduced, by means of 
the Inquisition, the population of Spain from ten to six million. 

The Spanish monarchic spirit has never relented of any of the 
cruelty which characterized the old despotic methods of government. 
No people will longer submit to the old form of despotism in reli- 
gious or civil aSairs ; but Spain will have no other. The attempt at 
a republic was strangled in its birth by the Spanish clergy. Cruelty 
is a national trait of Spanish character. Her national, popular en- 
tertainment, is the brutal bull-fight. The nation that is characteris- 
tically brutal in government, institutions, religion, and amusements, 
is a degenerate in the family of nations. 

One more acute cause is working the ruin of Spain. There is 
in Spain a certain small class of grandees, notoriously corrupt. They 
are ruled by a spirit of greed. They have worked the ignorance and 
gullibility of the people since the days when Spanish greed for the 
gold of Peru and Mexico corrupted the ruling classes. The rulers 
of the Spanish colonies have been the most corrupt puplic men in 



9 
the world. An example is found ia Weyler. The Tab!e'., thel<^d 
ing Roman Catholic paper in England, recent y contained aa art o;e 
in which it appears that when he was governor of the Ffci'ippine 
Islands his salary was ^40,000 a year, and that at the cose ef his 
term he had to his credit, in the banks of Lond in an ; Paris, a sum 
variously estimated at from ;?i,oooooo to ;?4ocoooo 

The tyranny and corruption of the colonial governors in the 
Spanish provinces on our south at the beginnii g of our century, 
brought on the dissatisfaction in that vast section of the coa'intut 
south of the Rio Grande, which, under the example of cmstituti-^nal 
liberties furnished them by the young republic of the United States, 
broke into open revolt, and led to the beginning of Spain'a dismissal 
from the American continent. 

I have for years been a diligent student of Spanish history and 
character, and I have faithfully analjz2d and defined for you the 
causes which I find to be responsible for the decline and fall of 
Spain. 

I must now address you on the second part of this theme : how 
our country has become involved in war with Spain. 

Dr. Von Hoist, of the university of Chicago, said a few months 
since, that ours is " the one nation on earth whose peace is wholly in 
its own hands." Our relations with Spain throughout this century 
will show that this opinion is not maintainable. 

After the fall of Napoleon, and the consequent quiet which 
came to Spanish affairs at home, that country began to see that the 
new principles which were set to work in the thought of the political 
world by the young republic of the United States, were fatal to her 
colonial system of oppression and suppression. Because of this logi- 
cal influence of American liberty, Spain accompanied her attempt 
to crush the uprising against her rule in Mexico and the South Amer- 
ican countries, by many and serious depredations upon our com- 
merce, by her privateers. For a third of a century these depreda- 
tions were exceedingly irritating. In addition, our diplomatic rela- 
tions were, from the first, troublesome. The administration of 
Washington failed to secure a settlement of the boundaries between 
the United States and the Spanish possessions, and the free com- 
mercial navigation of the Mississippi. After Spain had ceded Louisi- 
ana to France, these relations became more annoying. Several 
times during the century the Spanish minister at Washington had 
to be recalled, because of undiplomatic and half-civilized conduct. 



Spain never respected or faithfully kept her treaties with us. 
Spanish aggression, greed, and inhumanity, on this Western Conti- 
nent, have been constant, and frequently brought us to the point of 
war. The provokiug element was always found in Spain's semi- 
barbarom course. The Mexican War, in its earliest phases, was of 
Spanish origin. President Grant had to give peace to Cuba, after 
allowing the revolution to continue for eight years, by bringing 
heavy diplomatic pressure to bear upon Spain ; the Virginius affair 
in 1873 in which American seamen were cruelly shot without trial, 
are but phases of the irritating relations with Spain; which clearly in- 
dicate that a highly civilized nation; compelled by geographical posi- 
tion and commercial relations to hold intercourse with a half civilized 
nation actuated by a spirit of barbarous aggressiveness, cannot per- 
manently maintain peace unless the high civilization submit to the 
low, and permit, in silence, all sorts of unspeakable inhumanities 
about its very doorways. 

The course of Spain was one which no longer could be tolerated 
by a self-respecting, humane people, who had lifted before the world 
the standard, not only of independence and liberty, but of right and 
justice. Spain had taxed Cuba beyond what any but a Spanish col- 
ony had ever suffered ; she reduced her white race to slavery ; she 
was a party to the grossest embezzlements and defalcations on the 
part of officials, amounting in seven years in the Havana customs 
alone to $100,000,000; she entered, three years ago, upon the most 
cruel attempt to fores a colony into submission by extermination, by 
which, through desolation and distress, misery and starvation, she 
had completed a ruin more entire and pitiable than cyclone and 
earthquake harnessed together had ever produced. Almost within 
sight of the lighthouses on our Florida coast men have been tortured, 
precisely as Spain tortured three hundred years ago. Two hundred 
thousand have been reduced to starvation, with the Spanish military 
governor daily witnessing the agony, and forbidding them the gift of 
charity. Let the Spanish names of Pizzaro, Cortez Alva, and Wey- 
ler, go into history as the infamous four whose unfeeling and savage 
inhumanities outdo those of Nero ; and the last was as inhuman as 
the others. 

Daring these three years our Spanish trade has dwindled from 
1126,418,693 to $50 212,085 Because of the imbecility of Spanish 
rule in Cuba, American lives have been lost, the peace and moral in- 
terests of American cammunities disturbed, and the continuance of 
a half barbarous government permitted at our very doors, all of 
which is logically out of place in this hemisphere of self government. 
Three times the United States has protected Cuba for Spain once 
from France, once from England, and once from Mexico. Now the 
time has come when it is the duty of America to protect Cuba from 
Spain and her atrocities. 



Spain had been given centuries in which to learn the lessons of 
right, of justice, and of tolerance. America afforded her a striking 
object lesson of national greatness, prosperity, and happiness ; but 
the example was thrown away. Against those high manifestos of 
liberty, which have attained permanent forms in the national life 
and thought of Canada, the United States and Mexio, and against 
the financial, coumercial, and peace interests of Europe, and against 
the most solemn warnings of American diplomacy, she was deter- 
mined to continue her war of outrage and extermination. 

As far back as 1859 Anthony Trollope visited Cuba, and report- 
ing the abominable state of things, said : " There must be some stage 
in misgovernment which will justify the interference of bystanding 
nations in the name of humanity." America has recognized her re- 
sponsible relation to this principle. The fulness of time had come. 
The clock had struck the pathetic hour of justice. Ah, I say it rev 
erently, the signal of Providence had sounded. We are not respon- 
sible for this war, unless you mean that our mission is divorced from 
humanity, j ustice, and right. We served notice on Spain that we 
should be compelled to heed the cry of a starving people, and con- 
sider the plea of j astice, even though we should have to perform 
police duty to do it. The warning she cast aside. 

We came near departing from our celebrated Monroe doctrine 
at high noon April 9th of this year, when the President of the United 
States permitted the representatives of the seven great European 
powers to formally assemble in the White House and make presen- 
tations of their united desire touching political conditions oa this 
Western Continent. The closing paragraph of the President's reply 
is worthy of quotation : "The government of the United States is 
confident that equal appreciation will be shown for its own earnest 
and unsalfish endeavors to fulfill a duty to humanity, by ending a sit- 
uation the indefioite prolongation of which has become ins uffer 
able." 

This defines our position. On this ground we tske our stand, 
and justify our course before the world. The greed of commercial- 
ism, the unholy and unpatriotic spirit of militarism, and the dema- 
gogusism of politicians, may unite to move us to the ground of con- 
quest and imperialism. If we permit ourselves to be moved, we will 
deserve the censure of the Christian world. 

In the principles by which we justify our course before the 
world, we disclaim all commercial motives, though our coast trade 
has been mined; we disclaioi the motives of revenge, though condi- 
tions of Spanish barbarism were responsible for the loss of a great 
ship and hundreds of seamen ; we disclaim the motive of conquest, 
though we could take and hold all the Spanish possessions in both 
the Atlantic and Pacific. 

As a peac3 man of the most pronounced convictions, deploring 



w*r always, yet I hold that there are times when the very primary 
and most sacred rights and institutions must be defended by force. 
But the present is a higher war than that of self defense ; it is for 
the defense of those who are too weak to defend themselves. 

I pass to the last consideration of my theme. How will this 
war affect ourselves and the world .-' The values of passing events 
are of stupendous ▼eight. I am impressed profoundly that the 
great Ruler of the world, and the director general of movements 
running through centuries of time, has made a providential assign- 
ment to our country. I see it now in our discovery. The North 
American continent was untouched by Span'sh navigators, yet it lay 
right in their path. I sea it in our colon'zition, which was mostly 
effected by men of thrift, of education, and who were lovers of lib- 
erty. There was only one colonizsr of force of character. Lord 
Baltimore, among the Catholic colonizers. I see it in the develop- 
ment of our colonial system towards representative, educative, tol- 
erant and free institutions. I see it in the internal development and 
unification of our institutions, in the process of which was the Civil 
War, and the ^onsrqusnt overthrow of slavery. That was one of 
the most remarkable wars of history in this: beneath the surface of 
questions which were agitated as the ciu38 of the cocflic*, lay 
concealed the real question, v'z. : whether a system of government, 
eminently republican and representative, and built on political 
equality, could continue, with diverse and discordant institutions in 
different states. In settling this, those who fought on Southern 
fields, many of whom yet linger and we pray may long remain with 
u?, had a hand in adjusting one of the gravest and most important 
questions which ever came up in civilization for settlement. And it 
was settled so in accord with the higher laws of Christian civih'zi- 
tion, which are the laws of God, that it can never agiin disturb any 
civilization of the first rank. A hundred years of experience makes 
impressive the reflection made by Washington at his first inaugura- 
tion : " No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the 
invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men, more than the 
people of the United States." 

We should always interpret Providence with humble mind and 
hesitating hand ; but in the light of American history and the Provi- 
dential past it seems clear, at least to my mind, that our present duty 
is to deprive Spain permanently of all her possessions in the west 
Atlantic, and either dispossess her in the north Pacific, or permit 
her to longer rule only under the guardianship of some of the high 
Christian powers. Crispi, the eminent and patriotic Italian states- 
man, has recently said : " Spain has committed sins, and for these 
sins must pay the penalty." Spain has pushed the outrageous bar- 
barism of her conduct not only to the point where, as our President 
says, it has bejome insufferable, but beyond the limit of Providential 



13 

endurance. Her sins have been mostly those of an uninterrupted 
assault upon the just instincts of liberty, right and humanity ; and to 
America, the first star of liberty to rise in the western world, falls 
the duty to punish Spain. It seems to be in the line of our historic 
calling. Let the rulers of the nations be quiet, and the statesmen 
of the world keep silent, while another and most important act, in 
the great drama of civilizition, is being worked out by the great 
Republic of the West. 

This was not intended to be, it must not be, a war for revenge, 
or for conquest, or military glory. Here are indicated the perils of 
which we must be warned : The dangers of a professional war 
spirit ; a crazs for conquest, with the trend to imperial empire ; and 
the unholy, unpatriotic, and evil ambition to rival the military 
equipment of other nations. There are those who would glory in 
war because of opportunities afforded for the performance of daring 
deeds, and the chance for fame and self -glory. This is brutal, and 
unbecoming American motives. Such men as Mahan in the navy 
and Miles in the army, who would make warfare an American pro- 
fession, are unworthy leaders of American thought. The man who 
would lead the great American Republic into an ambition to com- 
pete with the militarism of Europe, is an enemy of our institutions. 
We are in this war, not for a love for war as a profession, but 
because we have been inducted into it by a solemn sense of duty; 
and when that duty has been performed, and Spain has been taught 
the lesson that she can no longer interrupt the progress of humanity, 
and the war is over, we want our armies speedily disbanded, and our 
ships mostly returned to the carrying trade of the country. Con- 
quest, either to feed the insatiate craving for the enjoyment of mili- 
tary triumph, or to gratify the ambition fcr mere imperial greatness, 
is equally unprofitable and wi:ked. If we consider the high welfare 
of coming generations, we will desire no additional possessions 
beyond our coast lines, unless they come as necessary contingents of 
war, to be held as security for indemnity, or until they can be 
restored to original government, or their people encouraged, under 
our protection, into self-government. The only exception I can see 
is, that we do need and should secure coaling stations, supply 
depots, and sheltering and repair harbors, in all sections. The cer- 
tain expansion of our commerce in the dawning century, makes the 
last provision of vast importance. 

What shall we do with the Philippines, is a question for state- 
craft of the highest order, and to such a settlement I must refer it, 
with just a passing reflection. In the North Pacific is a group of a 
thousand islands, under the Spanish flag, with a total population 
almost equal to the present population of the United States, and 
which is almost entirely in the most benighted condition, except 
upon the fringe of trading settlements where Spanish rule has 



14 
taught them the superstitions of her civilization, which are worse 
than the simplicity of their savage state. American government in 
the Philippines would be a failure, if accompanied with the continu- 
ance of the Spanish religion. The rule of the Spanish monk has 
been the blackest crime in the Pacific islands. The institutions of 
our political system and those of the Spanish religious system are so 
logically at war, that the irrepressible conflict would at once begin ; 
in fact, it has already begun in the act of the archbishop at Manila 
issuing his inflammatory circulars to be read in the churches, 
making outrageous charges against the Americans, and urging the 
people to rise and kill the American heretics; whereupon Commo- 
dore Dewey notified him that unless he refrained in the future from 
exciting the mob spirit in the population, the American guns would 
be turned upon the cathedral at Manila and the archbishop's palace 
at Cavite. The next day the archbishop wrote a letter saying that 
he had no idea that the Americans were such perfect gentlemen. 
We should be slow to undertake the government of foreign and 
uncivilized people, whose only tutelage in being led out of savagery 
has been under Spanish misrule. Still, we may have the corfidence 
of expectation that American wisdom will rise to its sacred duty, 
and that the oppressed people of the ocean isles, lying in the paths 
of great continental trade and travel, will see the dawn of a better 
time ; for where the American flag advances, the American mission- 
ary follows with the school teacher and hospital service, and the 
real work of civil'zation will begin. 

Let us carefully seek the indications of our national duty. The 
highest function of human government is to follow the lights thrown 
out by Divine Providence. Because for over a century we have fol- 
lowed a policy of keeping out of touch with the moral corflicts of 
the world, should not blind us to see the hour, which must come, 
when to us will be providentially assigned the mission of taking an 
active part in the evolutian of nations, and of tribes, and which evo- 
lution is towards a higher grourd of agreement for international jus- 
tice and peace. The man who has the gospel himself cannot always 
escape the duty of giving it to others. The nation which has at- 
tained to the best results of intelligence and liberty itself, cannot al- 
ways withhold Its active influence in behalf of the weak. New con- 
ditions make new duties. The world conditions of the nineteenth 
century assigned to us the duty of nonintervention ; the world con- 
ditions of the twentieth century may lay upon us the highest duty 
which Providence ever committed to a nation, that of agreeing, with 
whatever other nations may agree with us, to stand up for the right 
and prevent national murder, the same as the local police prevent 
crime in thtir limited jurisdiction. William E. Gladstone, on the 
eve of departing this life, said : " America will one day become what 
England is to day, the head steward of the great household of the 
world, because her service will be the best and ablest." 



IS 

I hold that something like this is the legitimate sphere for 
American service in the cause of human progress, politically, moral- 
ly, religiously. The rule of responsibility for the individual is the 
rule of responsibility for the nation. A man of right mind and 
right heart, and strong arm, could not remain a mute witness of ag- 
gravated wrongs about him which he could correct. What is a right 
and strong nation but an aggregation of such men acting in a na- 
tional capacity ? And this one thing, glorious in fact as it is grave 
in responsibility, I foresee will eventuate from this war. What shall 
I call it ? May I not name it, the consciousness cf our larger mis- 
sion in the affairs of the world, for the good of the world ? There 
will come to the American national heart a warmer and broader 
sympathy, and to the national mind a clearer and more comprehen- 
sive conception of duty, and to American patriotism, the more lofty 
task of witnessing to others the value of such institutions as we 
possess, The God of nations may be calUng us to take a larger 
part in the administration of the affairs of the world. Certainly the 
plainest sign-board arising out of the evolution of events has this 
written on it — there is a gradual federating of the best forces in civ- 
ilization to maet that other federating of the worst. 

Now to this coming federation of the beit nations will be as- 
signed as part of its mission the prevention of any further adminis 
tration, in the settled portion of the world of, the affairs of the bar- 
barous ages ; the adoption of an international code of justice, under 
which all colonial populations will feel safe ; and the securement to 
all uncivilized and half civilized people a just and equal opportunity 
for se'f development. 

If endowment with great gifts indicates anything of that re- 
sponsibility which is laid on by the hand of God, then the hour is 
approaching, by express time, when the powerful American nation 
must speak for right and uprightness, and she must speak with a 
voice that will be respected the eaith around. With numbers, in- 
telligence, reiources, institutions of liberty and education, wealth 
and skill, unsurpassed by any other nation in the world, there rests 
upon us a prodigious moral pressure to do our duty. 

By this war, which is held by a unanimity, earnestness, and uni- 
versality of sentiment never before equalled by our people — by this 
war — we say, that we feel constrained, from the very character of 
our national conscience, to terminate outrageous conditions perpe- 
trated by European governments on the American side of the oceans. 

But that which is unbearable on one side of the ocean will 
some day be declared unbearable on the other. I look forward to a 
great Council Chamber of nations in the 20th century. In this 
chamber will be considered those universal questions which spring 
out of the natural instincts of human rights wherever man is found. 
And in this Council America must wield an inflaence commensurate 




i6 

with our greatness as a nation, and to our s 
and free people. And more, and it is the c 

forming on the rising horizon of the 20th century, in that Council, 
and at the head of the table, America and Great Britain will sit side 
by side. It is altogether desirable that there should be a closer 
fellowship of these two people of kindred ties of blood, history and 
hberty. The higher civilization demands it. The peace of the na- 
tion is best guaranteed by it. The currents of events is rapidly 
forming for it. The very logic of operating moral forces throughout 
the world betokens it. The new political map of the world, now being 
formed, will show it. The Sovereign Ruler of the nations has or- 
dained it. It is one of the unpreventable things. And neither the 
cunning of European diplomats, the sophistry and hypocrisy of mi- 
nor American politicians, or the fumes and votes of the Irish alli- 
ance, can long delay its coming. It has baen given the right of way 
by that spirit of mystery of the destiny of nations. Great Britain 
is the only European power which has made a successful colonial 
experiment on this side of the water. The Dutch, France, Spain, 
and Portugal have all failed. Where goes Ihe British flag there ad- 
vances order, intelligsnce and liberty. These two types of govern- 
ment and institutions are of the same species, and the law of coher- 
sion,working in human affairs as it does in natural science, will force 
an Anglo-Saxon federation, though all the rest of the world should 
say no. Recently Sir Frederick Pollock, the eminent Oxford jurist, 
expressed the opinion "that such an alliance would make 
wholly for peace, and within its legitimate purposes, would be irre- 
sistable." The British prime minister has within these recent weeks 
expressed the hope that in the great and noble cause of humanity, 
the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack might wave together, for 
the first time in our history. With firm stroke and clear conscience 
we advance a hand into the intolerable aflEairs of the Old World dy- 
nasties, the only people in all Europe whose sympathy is unclouded, 
are the British. And the rippling waves breaking from old Eng- 
land's coast confides to the Atlantic waters, to whisper to the 
sands on our New England shore, the good salutation, " We are bro 
thers in every strife for the right." 

The day is dawning — God speed its coming — when the two na- 
tions, whose paths spring out of the same deep root of national life 
and feeling, will federate their banners, think alike, and act together, 
on the great moral problems of the world. 

If Uncle Sam, with his keen eye and nervous force, and John 
Bull, with his solid ballast, will stand together in the fear of God, 
with all the people countenancing only right motives, then humanity, 
with all of its sacred rights, in all its peaceful blessings, and for all 
its possible progress, will be safe guarded through the 20th century 
as never before since the world began. 



